These changes were about balancing monster difficulty vs. monster reward. It also helped us make sure that we weren't making any zones in Act I, Act II, and Act IV too OP, or the next must-go-to place for farming, by increasing their density. This way, zones should be more even in terms of reward, which should in turn give players more options when deciding where they want to farm.

So once again we get the "on one hand see what we did for you isn't it great? "(monster density) then as a side maybe they wont notice "oh by the way no trash mob is worth killing anymore even though there is twice as many"

Why do you insist on giving on one hand and taking away more with the other? Really a STUPID way of doing things.

The goal of increasing monster density was two-fold: 1) play up the fantasy of being a barbarian, demon hunter, monk, witch doctor, or wizard by giving players more monsters to kill and 2) provide viable alternates to Act 3.

The first goal is pretty easy to achieve: just up the density. DONE. However, if that's all we did, we would have just shifted where players farmed, not actually created any alternatives -- which didn't really solve any problems. Increasing density was just part of the equation. To make zones more equitable, we also needed to better scale the rewards of the monsters in them.

There were several monsters in the game pre-1.0.8 that were more or less outliers in terms of reward. That is, they provided similar experience and had drop rates comparable to monsters that were much more difficult to kill. What we did is essentially make it so that their rewards now match their difficulty -- and that's something that's just better for game overall. Wyatt provided a relative explanation here, as well. He only focused on scorpions, but the rationale is the same.

(Also, keep in mind that we buffed the hell out of EXP. What's not included in that post is that Enlightened Shrines stack multiplicatively, too.)

If anyone's upset about the "nerfs," I suggest you try playing the game some. It really does balance out, or if anything, you come out ahead. Yeah, they drop less often, but you kill many more mobs with about the same speed, so it's a net gain. Add to that, the fact that it's a lot more fun to wade through a populated map then run through a vacant one and...just try it.

This was our goal, and we think we were able to get everything to point where it feels like a net gain when you're in the game playing.

Obviously, if you've played and you disagree, let us know. We're still monitoring feedback on the new density changes and would love to hear (see?) if players think we could make some further improvements.